Max doesn’t remember when all of this started, at least, not really. He remembers a place with towers of steel and glass, where humans were all that there were, where the future was dark with the forgotten promises of progress, and the night sky made too bright by the lights of cities and fires. That is all Max remembers before he woke up in his first reincarnated body, which had been a human boy aged twelve. Max remembers desperately hiding that he was not the same son his ‘parents’ had known for eleven years before, unable to speak to tell them even if he had wanted to, how masking the memories of a past he remembered more strongly than the life of the boy he was living in had changed him. And he remembered the moment he saw his curses, three of them, even then.
He can’t speak now, and hasn’t spoken words since waking up here for the first time, and learning nonverbal communication methods sucked. His blessing from a deity he’s never known once offered him at least some comfort in that not all of his status displayed curses, even if he had no idea why or how he had it. He knew that with each reincarnation, the memories of his previous lives would begin to whittle and wane away into nothing, Eternia scorns those who defy death, after all. He trained for years in that first body, to become strong enough to leave the society he didn’t understand and live amongst the wilderness. That was when he’d met Setris, the first elf he’d met in this world, and looking back on it, the first of many beautiful women he would become acquainted with.
He was young then, naïve then, and he knows now that it was his own fault for never realizing how the girl thought of him until she begged him to love her. Back then though, he had been too focused on enjoying the ‘thrill of adventure’, on using his growing power to challenge larger and larger quests and monsters, building a reputation and a party, the same way he remembers imagining long ago. It was in that first body, traveling with Setris, that a… careless mistake(definitely not willful disregard of the established laws of this world) caused him to be locked up in a jail, where he’d met Marra, and the two escaped together.
His first death came shortly afterward, Max remembers throwing Marra across a bridge to Setris, before falling to the ground a hundred feet below. It hadn’t been the noble, heroic sacrifice of legend, just a simple series of mistakes involving a hairbrained escape plan, explosive magic, and a bridge. He hadn’t woken up in the realm of any gods though. Max woke up in another body. This time a child soldier, in the middle of a battle. That had been harrowing and scarring, even with what Max had already seen in this world by then.
The stories continue, and he remembers them more vividly with each of his beloved companions he met along the way to now. At what point all of his companions had decided that they didn't care what body he was in, he didn't know, but how they'd come up with a way for finding him after each reincarnation was genius, he could admit. He’s on his sixth body now, a lumberjack and grizzled war vet, or at least that’s what Max had pieced together from the fragments of the life he stole before his lovers found him, and they set off for adventure again. If it wasn’t for his party, Edora's Hand… And the harem said party formed around him over the course of his lives, he wouldn’t be sane anymore. Max thinks that instead of him being there for them, the way he feels it should be as a man, it’s more like the other way around.
So many muddled memories, the happy ones always fade first, but at least he’s never forgotten any of the girls. Twenty three years he’d been here, and part of him kind of wishes he’d never let the girls convince him to take that stupid Vow of Fertility, he honestly wishes sex wasn’t mandatory to maintain it, regardless of how useful the increased stamina is in combat. And the pact they’d had him make… He doesn’t regret that, in fact, that might be the thing he cherishes most, in fact, as long as he has that… He could die happily. If he’s ever allowed to die for real, at least.
--
Max finally manages to snap out of his own head as a giant, fleshy foot stomps the ground in front of him, as he barely manages to use his sheer strength to push himself backwards away from the crushing force. How close had he been to another death? After how many microseconds of his life flashing before him had he snapped back to his senses? How many more memories would he have lost if he’d let his melancholy win? How many of his beloved companions would he have lost? He steps back, and shakes off the momentary flood of memories by activating his Rage. He ‘hears’ Marra call out battle positions, commands, and statuses to the party through her Mindlink, but right now, in the swirl of fear and anger, none of that matters to him. Max looks up at the giant, a fat, ugly thing, almost like a bloated and deformed human toddler, except thirty feet tall and carrying an entire pine tree as a club.
He takes another leap backwards and draws his greatsword and greataxe from his back, wielding the two in one hand each, and he twists his upper body into Conqueror's Stance while bringing his legs to his Dragon's Breath Stance. Max slams the axe into the giant’s left shin, feeling the crunching of bones and the tearing of flesh like music, and he leverages the embedded axe to fling himself upwards with a boost of speed from Godsblood. He turns in midair, and spots his party, his beloved friends and companions, fighting against the other two giants, June and Vaye obviously struggling to hold one back in melee, while Setris and Marra have the other pinned with magic. Kayle is the only one he can’t confirm the location of with his brief glance, but only because Max knows she is likely repositioning for her next snipe.
Stolen novel; please report.
As he reaches the apex of his jump, right before the giant’s ugly head, he activates his favorite combination of skills for dealing with powerful foes. Warlord and Greater Sundering enhance his signature Skysplitting Strike, a combination of techniques that forms something entirely greater than the sum of its parts. He swings the greatsword with two hands this time, aiming for the giant’s neck. Achieving such a swing in midair is normally impossible, but Skysplitting Strike gives him more control over such motions than even being grounded would.
He hears the giant’s bellow of pain as his trusty blade bites into its neck, and he drives it further by planting his left shin on the other side of the giant’s head, using his leg and sword like a pair of super-powered scissors made possible by Greater Sundering. Max closes his eyes and tilts his head away from the spray of blood, pressurized enough to cause actual damage to his face as he fails to avoid the majority of the spurt, but it doesn’t matter now. With a final crack Max feels his sword come loose of the giant’s neck, and he immediately drives it into the monsters shoulder, and uses the stability the sword grants to spin his legs for a heavy kick, enhanced by Bonecrusher, launching the severed head away from the rest of the body in a mess of a cratered skull and fatty tissue cut in half below the jaw.
Max pulls his sword out of the giant, and lets himself drop to the ground. He doesn’t bother with trying to roll with the impact, instead simply bracing his legs and tearing the embedded axe out of the beast, before breaking out in a sprint towards the next giant while checking his health. 107/178, I can fight a little riskier for now. A frenzied berserker, yet still he manages to activate some of the most complicated and envied martial skills successively in the midst of a Rage. He allows himself some pride at that, the stats and classes he’s managed to obtain in his time here, and finally allows himself to feel comfortable in the future for the first time since that letter about prophecies and wars. His blades carve a leg out from underneath the giant pinned by Setris and Marra without even slowing his sprint down. He spins on his right foot, slashing the ugly thing’s heel on its remaining leg with his axe, before jumping out of the way of it falling to a knee.
This is what I am… Like some petty king or ancient lich could ever stop me-stop us-before I’d slaughter them all! He shouts in his own head, the Mindlink with his group conveying his emotions and rallying them all to fight harder. He feels Kayle respond back first, a brief warning to 'don't get ahead of yourself' as a lance of golden light from the treeline behind him punches through the skull of the kneeling giant, killing it instantly.
“Nice shot Kayle! Max, June is hurt, switch with-” Max doesn’t let Marra finish before he drops his axe and pushes his feet and free arm into the dirt, before launching himself forward towards the last melee.
‘June is hurt’ isn’t adequate enough of a description for one of his beloved companions missing an arm and looking barely conscious, even if she is on her feet. Max knows Setris can heal her completely once the battle ends, but either June or Vaye are on the verge of being killed by the giant’s titanic club if they don’t have help in the melee. If. Max thinks as he drops to a slide, letting a [Guiding Bolt] spell from Marra fly over his head and hit the giant while he switches his grip on his sword to proper two-handed again. He lets his feet catch on the ground, forcing his body upright, and he jumps at the falling hand the giant was obviously intended to crush Vaye and June with, now glowing with the light from [Guiding Bolt]. His blade catches the giant’s falling hand between its fingers, and Max drags the blade upwards, splitting the giant’s arm in two up to the elbow before Max loses momentum and starts falling. He spins, trying to find some part of the fat beast to plant his sword into for leverage, but instead finds a massive wooden club approaching him at high speed. He pulls his sword up to his chest to brace, and then everything goes dark.
--
“Max! Max! I know you’re alive, damnit! Wake up!” Setris shouts, casting another [Heal] as she does, and June lets herself sit down on the ground while she waits for the [Regenerate] spell to start re-growing her arm.
“That was a big hit, Set, let him catch his beauty sleep, would ya?” Vaye chimes in as she starts fiddling with her thick orcish hair, her half-crushed helmet long abandoned in the middle of the battle.
“Oh shut up, both of you! He’ll wake up in a couple moments if you just- Hey! Marra! Not fair, it's my turn today, right, everyone! C’mon, please!” Kayle tries to protest Marra putting Max’s head on her lap, but that obviously falls on deaf ears to everyone but Marra herself, who looks to be about to argue the point with the half-vampire. June just laughs at the two of them before they can get started, and everyone but Kayle joins in with her, but the girls all stop when Max opens his eyes, and looks at all of them. They’ve all gotten used to his expressions, regardless of what his body looks like at the time, and they recognize the look of relief and confusion that crosses his face as he rests his eyes on each of them individually, before he finally finds June.
“I’m fine, Max. It’s just an arm, Set has already started it re-growing. We won, we’re all safe. We can go home now, ok?”